[teruakohatu]

It leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I see large fossils being hauled out by individuals who have no interest in them, when I approach to chat, other than to sell or illegally export. They remind me of gollum, seeing everyone around them as a threat to their riches.

But a lot of fossils wouldn’t see the light of day unless there was a commercial market. I have heard stories on fossil forums about countries where there are restrictions and quarries will just crush them along with all the other rock.

In my country the vast majority of palaeontology is done by amateurs. There is only so much public funding but loads of amateurs. If private ownership was banned then academic research would go to near zero.

[jandrewrogers]

Creating positive incentives for landowners and discoverers is important. This shows up repeatedly as an issue with both archaeological and endangered species discoveries in many countries, including the US, where landowners are strongly disincentivized to report any discoveries since it can have a strong negative impact on the value of their land and their ability to use it. As often as not this leads to the destruction of the thing people are trying to preserve e.g. "shoot, shovel, shut up". [0] It is understandably difficult to get people to act against their own interest.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot,_shovel,_and_shut_up

[lukan]

I guess it is the same thing with other archeologic artefacts. Here in germany, if you find something old and remarkable, you must report it and you will get nothing, no matter how long you searched. So most of that stuff is happening illegal and underground, which means that most findings never make their way to the researchers and the public, like this here allmost did not:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebra_sky_disc